Madam Ombudsman: Use and Translation of Masculine Job Titles for Women in the EU

Abstract

The loanword ombudsman seems to have escaped the neutralisation craze experienced by other English profession and position nouns. The EU guidelines call for the replacement of all man-ended nouns with neutral alternatives but do not refer specifically to ombudsman. In semantic languages, the rule is to use the masculine noun for the office and the person who holds it by default. Several simultaneous requirements must be met before the feminine form can be used. We will establish the prevalence of the masculine form of ombudsman as opposed to ombudswoman in official EU websites and large corpora, despite the office having been occupied by a woman for almost a decade. To suggest a non-sexist alternative to ombudsman, a distinction is made in line with the current rule between references to the office and the person. In our proposal, the office must adopt a denomination that is not sexist, does not need modification with every change of office, and acknowledges the destination of English EU texts as sources for translation. Our non-sexist alternative must also match the scope of the work of the office as set in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. To find a valid alternative, international ombuds organisations will be analysed in search of their members’ denominations, both in English and Spanish. For references to the office, metonyms can be of particular interest due to their tendency to be translated literally (in an institutional setting), and devoid of semantic gender. For references to the person, gender-specification is suggested, in particular when the holder is a woman, as a means to make women visible in positions of management.